Lack of Soccer in USA

How many players have came out of the USA? Maybe around 10 good ones. How many players have come out of Brazil? Millions. Why don’t we change this? Soccer is most played and watched in the world. US should give young athletes a chance to become great soccer players like Messi or Ronaldo. The US spends a lot of money on unnecessary things, why not soccer? I believe that soccer should be available for young athletes everywhere because everyone should have a chance to fulfill this dream. The US should pay less attention to baseball, football, basketball, and they should pay more attention to the most played and most watched sport in the whole world. Steve Davis, a journalist at NBC Sports, believes that soccer is thriving in the USA more than ever.“The US pays more to Sepp’s FIFA for World Cup broadcasting rights than any country. Read that again. The US pays more than ANY country in the world to broadcast the World Cup.” “The EPL rights just went to NBC for $250M for three years. Clearly soccer is alive and thriving in America. The domestic league is very well attended (Seattle might be somewhat of an outlier but you can not ignore the average 40k+ attendance in 2012) and the only factor that legitimizes MLS criticism is the lacking TV ratings.”

Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), is not a big fan of the MLS at all.“There is no very strong professional league” in the United States, Blatter told Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara. “They have just the M.L.S., but they have no professional leagues which are recognized by the American society.” Blatter has given America almost 20 years to challenge the Premier League, Serie A and the Bundesliga. And to him, it seems that it is more than enough. “We had the World Cup in 1994”. “But we are now in 2012 — it’s been 18 years — it should have been done now. But they are still struggling.”

The MLS, founded in 1996, is a very new league that will always have a disadvantage of less history than other famous leagues, like La Liga founded in 1929 or Serie A founded in 1898. Although the rant from the people saying that soccer is not popular in the US, there are some facts against them. On the list of the top 50 athletes in the US, Lionel Messi 16th, David Beckham 20th, and Cristiano Ronaldo 24th. Lionel Messi ranks ahead of Dwyane Wade. And only to be surpassed by a baseball player in the ranks. After the World cup in 1994 the growth of soccer in the US was very significant. Overall yes soccer in the US is progressing, but it is nowhere near the level of soccer in places like Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina etc.... I believe that maybe in 2030 or 2040 soccer in the US might be at the level of those countries, but right now it is not.

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